Lull
by LadySilver
Summary: Melissa and Derek have a late night encounter and a few things to say. One-shot.


_A/N: I don't usually post comment fic here, but this one grew long enough to warrant it. This was written for bethskink. As always, comments and critique are welcome._

**Lull**

by LadySilver**  
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Melissa had always known of the Hales. She'd grown up in Beacon Hills, had only left for the years dedicated to nursing school and her first year of her marriage. They'd moved back when Scott was born. She'd been working the morning that the Hale house burned down, had helped treat the four Hale family members who lived long enough to get to the hospital, had helped the two teens—the ones who had been at school during the blaze—stand vigil as the death roll call grew, mitigated hardly at all by the news that their uncle would probably live. Later she donated more money than she could spare to the relief fund, helped with the clothing drive, the bake sales.

In the years since the fire, she'd managed to compartmentalize the tragedy of that day. She'd never forgotten, but in a lot of ways she had stopped remembering. She wasn't thinking about the fire at all when she pulled into the gas station. What she was thinking about was the differential pay on the late shifts she'd been volunteering for and whether she could cut a corner here or there to finally afford a new driver's side mirror for her car. She was thinking about Scott and the challenges of trying to raise a 16 year old who didn't seem to mind that she was never around, who wouldn't let her in when she was.

Her shift had ended during that lull in the night, the span of time before dawn when the streets were empty and everyone who could be asleep was. It was cold. Breath billowing like fog from her mouth, she struggled to get the pump to work without touching the chilled metal for more than split-seconds. She cursed herself for leaving her gloves and jacket in her desk, for being in such a hurry to get home that she didn't want to spare the seconds to retrieve them.

A car pulled into the other side of the pump, and she glanced up automatically. At this time of night, another person was a surprise, could be dangerous. The car was a black Camaro. She gave an admiring nod, took a small step to the side so she could better see its features; she'd always had a thing for sports cars. Sometimes she joked that the best quality in Scott's father had been his taste in cars.

The man who climbed out of the vehicle reminded her immediately of those people who came to the ER against their will. Those who were so sick or injured that they had no choice, who rated their pain a 6 on a 10 point scale, when she knew they wanted to say 12. This man had the same determined strength written into every line of his body. His black leather jacket and beard stubble registered in her mind as a deliberate KEEP AWAY sign. She wondered why he needed one. Only when he turned to swipe his credit card in the reader, when he glanced at her watching him, did she recognize his eyes. She recalled kneeling in front of the teen with those eyes—too big in his still youthful face—offering what sympathy she could, knowing that he couldn't believe a word of it.

"Derek?" she asked. "Derek Hale?" The name popped into her head and out of her mouth before she had a chance to wonder if she really recognized him after all. A lot of people came through the ER, nearly all of whom faded from her memory before their discharge papers were signed.

He stared at her for a long second, those eyes narrowed in suspicion, trying to figure out how she knew him. She tugged at the hem of her scrub top, felt the flutter of her name tag against her chest. He must have seen it move. His nostrils flared. "You're Scott's mom," he said, as if that explained everything, as if he could see the name tag from where he stood and had used that to connect the dots.

"You know Scott?" she asked, forcing herself to sound casual. Here she had no idea until now that Derek was back in town, yet he had been spending time with her son. Just one more thing that Scott had apparently failed to mention. She ticked her eyes to the pump where the read-outs told her that the gas tank had been a lot closer to empty than she would ever admit, and that the new mirror wouldn't be happening anytime soon.

She must not have been as successful in modulating her tone as she thought because the corners of Derek's mouth softened into something that looked like a valiant, though ultimately unsuccessful, attempt at a smile. "We've spoken a few times."

Her mother instincts recognized an understatement when she heard one; they weren't that atrophied. "Oh?" she replied. The pump clicked off. She made no move to replace the nozzle, rubbed her hands together to force some heat into them, hoped he'd volunteer more. He didn't seem like the kind of person who responded well to threats.

The street bordering the gas station was empty of traffic, silent. With the harsh lights of the station's self-service pumps overhead, she could barely see it at all. She felt like she and Derek were the last two survivors in an empty world. She quashed that thought, forced it into perspective against her memory of the Hale family funeral. She'd seen Derek and Laura standing in front of the row of caskets, shoulders touching, expressions lost.

Derek shoved his hands in his pockets, assumed a stance like he was at parade rest. For a long moment, the only sound between them was the thrumming of the fuel into his car. "You'll have to ask him," he finally replied. Melissa deflated. She'd hoped to get more than that, something specific she _could_ask her son that he wouldn't be able to avoid answering. "Your pump is done," he added, ticking his chin toward her car, polite, as if she simply hadn't noticed.

She played along, the dismissal clear. "Thanks," she said. She replaced the nozzle, finished out the sale, fished her keys out of her purse. She wanted to say more, even if just a platitude. But none seemed appropriate. Even a _It's nice to see you again_isn't safe. Without a social closure at hand, she decided to risk it and say what she needed to: "He's not always good about remembering to take care of himself," she commented, as if thinking out loud.

"I've noticed." A touch of frustration tinged his tone. Then, more serious, he added, "He's got a lot of people watching out for him. He'll do OK."

Melissa nodded, not sure how to understand the statement, but knowing that it was true. Anything she said next would be wrong, so she slid into the car without speaking. The slightly warmer interior was a relief from the chill. She sighed, ran a hand over her eyes.

As she drove home, shift differentials and budgets and car mirrors were pushed from her mind. She hadn't thought about the Hales in a long time. Like everyone else in town, she'd assumed that Derek and Laura would never come back, had no reason to—that what had happened to them was over.

But they had; it wasn't. She remembered abruptly that Laura had been killed; the newspaper article had mentioned her name only once, almost perfunctorily, as if to downplay the magnitude of the murder.

Derek had already been through more tragedy than imaginable. But he acted like a man getting ready for battle, not one returning from war. She just hoped that however Scott was involved, he'd be able to make the right decisions.

She had a sinking that the Hales were once again about to become all the news of Beacon Hills.

END


End file.
